The Young Men without Cream Tarts
by Paquette la Chantefleurie
Summary: I'm not all too happy with this little rambling based on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club. I also had no ideas for a title, thus, it is based on the first story of the original work, Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts.


The President watched the assembly forming around the pool table on the 3rd floor. Absentmindedly shuffling the cards of fate, she looked for unfamiliar faces among the crowd. The group had only grown by three young men, no more than grinning little schoolboys. She wondered why she had admitted them in the first place, why she had changed the tradition of selectively turning people away. Undoubtably they were of the many fools that landed in her club, not realizing how much they valued life. Such people were a nuisance to her, always causing diversion until silenced forevermore. Never thinking of how much they had, how much they could have had, never thinking that what they had gotten themselves into. There were all kinds of miserable people amongst her. Everyone who truly wanted to disappear - plus a few unlucky others. No one could get outside fo the walls of her den once they decided to enter. No one must ever know what went on withing those walls, lest all the hopeless, beaten creatures before her be cast back into the streets, to be beaten evermore by the cruelty of humankind. Therefore, there was only one way out of her sanctuary, her Suicide Club: death.

She began to pass out the cards. The three newcomers were grinning coyly, surely. Rather disturbingly - they had nothing to grin about. Life is a burden which some chose to rid of sooner than others. One big evolution towards the relief and sanctuary of Death, who is ever ready to accept anyone to her dark cloak of comfort. Life is in no way as kind; shunning many, she is rather prejudiced. Here in the Suicide Club, no one was ever turned away. There were always, of course, the fools who wished they had been. Those were the ones who had ignored there rare kindness Life bequeathed to them - them, of all people. Though she wished her truly suicidal comrades to have their dreams fulfilled, she also hoped for one of the boys to get the ace of spades - for this was the symbol of death - and another the ace of clubs. The owner of the latter card was the one who would murder that of the ace of spades. In the club, people did not actually kill themselves, despite the name - their fellow club members did the task for them. One can commit suicide on his own, but sometimes Life just wants to torture, and holds one back, forcing them to live on. People in this situation were for whom the club was really for.

By this time, silence had filled the billiard room on the 3rd floor. The club members were still, aside from the newcomers, who glanced about, not fully aware that this first viewing could also be their last. The pool table served as no more than a place upon which to distribute the cards, determining the nights' victim, and occasionally, a stage for the rare speech of the President. It was quite large - it had to be, in order to have the company of the club standing around it. There were a decent number of guards, those who had, or wished to have no future, but requested Death to take them with her own hand rather than another with a knife or some poison. They knew of all entrances, and the people who entered, and stopped those attempting to exit. Their life was to serve the President and her Club. Further details on the President will remain a mystery for future genenrations. This tale is not for the purpose of ending the wonderful organization, and this descriptive digression has gone on long enough.

No one had, thus far, drawn the ace of spades, for when that event occurred, the expression of the cardholder gave him away. The man with the other black ace had sighed, with a resigned look on his face. The President knew him well - nothing of his past, or even his name, but he had been at the club for a while now, and taken many lives. She knew the sound of his step, his habits. This knowledge of hers held true for all old members. The man was no longer moved in anyway by his task, and looked as if his hope had been lost for a long time, and the soul, in desperation, had fled. His way of murder was always by poison. He refused to be near his victom at the time of death.


End file.
